


I promise to sing to you (when all the music dies)

by moxiemorton



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 04:13:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14180328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moxiemorton/pseuds/moxiemorton
Summary: and they were roommates.......AKA the one where they room together and get fake engaged but then date for real and then get married for real but everyone still thinks it's all fake





	I promise to sing to you (when all the music dies)

**Author's Note:**

> Double prompt!
> 
> Beca: "Hey Emily?" Emily: "Hm?" Beca: "How long do you think it will take the Bellas to figure out we're married?"
> 
> AND
> 
> “Whenever Beca privately thought about getting married (which she would never admit to doing, not even to herself), she would imagine she would want to elope. She always thought that was the most sappy, romantic, way to do it.”

It was all because of that one April Fool’s joke they played a few years ago.

After graduating, Emily had decided to take a gap year and collect her thoughts before applying to grad school. She was accepted into a psychology and research internship program at a children’s hospital in New York, and before any of the Bellas could congratulate her, she was desperately asking for advice on apartment hunting and moving to the city on her own.

 **CR:**   _Chloe amy and the midget live in the city_

 **CR:**   _Why not room with them?_

 **Beca:**   _First of all fuck you_

 **Beca:** _Second, we are already 3 girls living in a one-bedroom apartment_

 **Beca:**   _We physically cant fit even one of Legacy’s legs_

 **Stacie:**   _Sounds kinky ;)_

 **Chloe:** _Well I’m going off to vet school soon so that’s one open vacancy!_

 **Fat Amy:** _Make that 2, im a millionare i dont need a crap apartment_

 **Beca:**   _Wow, thanks guys. This is like a breakup over group chat._

 **Chloe:**   _We’re literally in the same room sweetie_

And so Emily moved into Beca’s apartment with two suitcases full of clothes, five boxes of books and knick knacks, and her hamster as soon as Chloe and Fat Amy were out. Her internship was quite a distance away, but she made it work. She took up a part-time job waiting tables at a bar and grill around the corner on weekends, and she spent weeknights and days off researching grad schools with a good psych program in the area. Her schedule was erratic, long, and exhausting.

Her and Beca fell into an easy pattern despite her crazy calendar. They determined shower times. They took turns taking out the trash. Beca did most of the cooking on days they didn’t order takeout, but Emily always did the dishes. They sometimes met up at bars or restaurants after work. The hospital was next to a discount liquor store, so Emily brought home wine or beer after her Friday shifts. They occasionally played tracks from Beca’s studio clients over her laptop speakers, and they would spend hours criticizing the bad lyrics and boring melodies.

And if they slowly began to realize that they might be falling for the other, neither dared to admit it. It was fine, the way they were living, anyway. Emily liked that she was finally able to become close with Beca, and Beca was relieved to be living with a level-headed Bella for once in her life. They connected the strongest over music, but as time progressed, they found more and more parts of themselves in each other, and the connection grew to a point where the line between “platonic roommates” and “potentially something more” became fuzzy.

* * *

It’d almost been a year since Emily moved in, and Beca was peeling potatoes and carrots at the kitchen table, watching the younger girl putting groceries away into the fridge, when a thought suddenly hit her. “We’re so fucking domestic,” she said. She looked up sharply as soon as she said it, hoping that Emily didn’t take it the wrong way.

“Are we?” Emily asked, skeptical. “I mean, we’re just roommates, living civilly together. I guess we do some domestic-y things like cook and clean, but domestic?” She unhooked her apron from the hanger and started tying the strap behind her back with sharp, practiced motions.

“You just! Look at you!” Beca exclaimed, gesturing towards the apron. “You literally just put on an apron. And you’re about to the dishes so I can prepare dinner.”

“Okay. So we’re a little domestic.”

“A  _lot_ domestic.”

Emily put down the dish she had just picked up and turned with a hand on her hip, and Beca bit back a comment about how motherly she looked. “Do you have a point to this?”

“Kind of,” Beca said, and Emily narrowed her eyes at the older girl’s mischievous smirk. “So you know how the Bellas are always joking that we’re dating or whatever, right?” she continues, trying,  _trying_  to ignore how Emily’s cheeks turn pink. “So I was thinking we play a little April Fool’s prank on them.”

“Oh? It’s a little early for April Fool’s, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but this prank’s better if we build up to it.” She swept the peeled vegetables into a pot and carried it over to the stove. “Dress cute tomorrow, Legacy. We’re going on a date.”

It wasn’t really a date, but that wasn’t Beca’s prank. They both dressed up like they were about to drop by a garden party and went out into the city despite the chilly weather. Their first stop was a sketchy streetside jewelry vendor not too far from their apartment, where Beca asks Emily to pick out two rings that resemble engagement rings.

“ _That’s_  your prank?” Emily exclaimed. “A  _fake engagement_?”

“It’s the most believable prank we could ever pull, Em.” Beca looked unfazed, trading a glance with the confused vendor. “Now come on. I picked the prank, so you get to pick the rings.”

Grumbling but compliant, Emily bent over the rings and examined each one carefully before picking out two matching rings with elegant and sparkling stones set in them. They obviously weren’t diamonds or any nameable gemstone, since their total came out to be $30, but they looked real enough.

“And now?” Emily asked.

“And now,” Beca said, with the biggest smile Emily had ever seen on the tiny girl, “now we fake a proposal.”

By the time they got to the park, with Beca pretending to be a photographer along the way with her cracked iPhone and telling Emily how gorgeous she looks in a fake-paparazzi voice, Emily was just as on board with the prank as Beca was. They had a confused but accommodating stranger take pictures of their fake proposal, and after arguing about who should be the one proposing — “Beca, you’re already so much  _shorter_ than me, it’ll look weird in the photo.” “Are you  _kidding_  me? You’re going to be  _my_ height if you kneel, and you don’t think that’ll look weird?” — they had a whole album full of scenic and incredibly real-looking proposal photos.

They picked out a few that were the most believable and wrote up a quick and generic caption of  _Guess who’s engaged?_

“Ready?” Beca asked Emily, who was looking over her shoulder nervously.

“They’re going to explode,” she said, looking at her own phone.

“Hell yeah they are.”

She hit the send button.

 **Chloe:** _WHAT????_

 **Ashley:**   _OMG WHAT_

 **Stacie:**   _YOOOOOOOO_

 **Flo:**   _SINCE WHEN_

 **CR:**   _CALLED IT BITCHES_

The group chat continued blowing up for the next few hours, but both Beca and Emily gave only vague, simple, or mysterious answers that explained nothing and evaded personal information. Still, the Bellas didn’t seem to suspect a thing, and for a good part of a week, both Emily and Beca sent photos of each other at cafes, parks, bars, and even just in their apartment to the group chat. The Bellas ate up every single post. And it was just good fun for them to take disgustingly cute pictures to post publicly or to the Bella’s chat, photos of them kissing each other on the cheek, selfies of them lying in bed together, and — though Beca was  _not_  happy with this — a shot of Emily giving Beca a piggyback ride.

Neither of them brought up the fact that maybe, just maybe, these photos looked so real and believable to the Bellas because they were both secretly pretending that this was all real. Beca secretly loved the cafe dates they went on to take these pictures. Emily got butterflies whenever they laid down on her bed for the fake selfies, unable to look away from Beca’s focused expression as she edited the photos for public consumption.

Unknown to the other, they both dreaded the day they would have to stop.

* * *

On April Fool’s, they denounced the whole engagement shtick to the Bella’s group chat.

 **Beca:** _So guess what, aca-bitches_

 **Emily:** _APRIL FOOL’S!!!!_

 **Beca:** _> :)_

 **CR:** _???_

 **Fat Amy:** _The hell u 2 skanks talking about_

 **Beca:**   _We’re not actually engaged_

 **Emily:** _Surprise!_

 **Chloe:** _WHAT_

 **Chloe:** _OMG_

 **Chloe:** _WTF_

Chloe’s reaction was the tamest out of everyone. The Bellas were pissed and Beca is supremely roasted for hours, and Emily collects her fair share of frowning faces whenever she apologizes, but behind their screens, the two of them high five and laugh at every indignant insult thrown specifically at Beca.

Beca went to bed that night, restless with the thought that she and Emily would no longer be considered each other’s girlfriends, fiances, or anything more than just two friends who happened to be roommates. She stared into the darkness for hours, unaware that Emily was lying awake just a few feet away, the same thoughts running through her head.

* * *

Less than two months later, they started dating for real.

Surprisingly, Emily was the one who stuttered out the confession. Beca then stuttered out a similar confession in response. They were both bright red and it was awkward and they didn’t really know what to do next, but then Emily broke and started laughing and then they were just giggling messes in the middle of their apartment floor.

And it wasn’t that they tried to keep it a secret from the Bellas, but they never explicitly announced that they were together. Neither Beca nor Emily were the type to flaunt each other as girlfriends, and while Emily is constantly posting Beca and their dates on Snapchat and Instagram, no one, not even Stacie or Chloe, suspected that it was more than the  _hilarious_ fake-engagement duo just extending and referencing their world-famous prank.

Beca was perfectly fine with it. Emily wasn’t caught up on making sure everyone knew they were legitimately dating, and she was just happy having Beca to herself to care about what people thought about them. They were preoccupied with their busy work lives, especially with Emily starting grad school soon, and too preoccupied with each other to really consider what the Bellas assumed of them and what was actually true.

* * *

“Would you be against eloping?” Beca asked Emily out of the blue one Saturday. They were eating breakfast in bed, still a bit hungover from their big night out celebrating their second anniversary as a couple. Beca’s head was in Emily’s lap, the latter occasionally leaning forward to brush the crumbs off of the former’s PJs as she nibbled absently on a piece of toast.

“Why not a marriage?” Emily asked, genuinely curious and not at all challenging. “Don’t you want like, all the Bellas there? And your family? And…other friends?”

Beca munched thoughtfully on her toast before answering. “Honestly? Not really.” She sat up slowly, brushing more crumbs off her shirt, and shifted to face Emily. “I know this is going to sound, like. Totally sappy. And you’re gonna make fun of me for it, but whatever.”

“I won’t make fun of you,” Emily promised, giving her girlfriend a soft smile, and the half-chewed piece of toast almost fell from Beca’s mouth.

“U-uh. Okay. Well. I always thought…eloping was the way to go. For me, at least. Like, what better way to tell someone that you love them than to literally go behind the backs of everyone else you love and seal the deal without anyone’s approval or denial? That was always the “fuck ceremony and institution and pretentious dress-up parties, you’re the one I want and I don’t give a shit who cares and who doesn’t” kind of thing that made me reconsider weddings and shit.”

Emily laughed, and Beca didn’t feel like a heartless monster for once. “That’s actually pretty sweet when you put it that way,” she said, brushing a stray hair away from Beca’s eyes. “I’ve never heard anyone romanticize getting eloped before.”

“What can I say, I’m a revolutionary.”

“Okay.”

Beca froze mid-chew. “What?”

“I said okay,” Emily repeated, a gentle smile on her face. “Let’s elope.”

“Oh, my god. I was just… I didn’t mean… like,  _now_? You mean  _now_?”

“Why not?”

“Holy crap, Em. I only just brought up the idea that  _maybe_ one day we could consider it. I didn’t think you would be…”

“So open to it?” Emily finished for her. “Guess you’re a better salesman than you thought, Becs.”

It was as simple as that. So they eloped. Dressed in the Sunday best and accompanied by Emily’s ever-supportive parents as witnesses, they took a bus to the courthouse on a sunny Tuesday and got their marriage license and a short ceremony to sign the certificate and bam! They were married.

“Just like that,” Beca said, handing the pen to Emily.

“Just like that,” she agreed, smiling from ear to ear.

* * *

Barely a month has passed when Beca receives a triple text from Stacie.

 **Stacie:**   _When are you and Junk gonna get together?_

 **Stacie:** _You’re about to hit 30 in like a few months, shortstop_

 **Stacie:**   _Better get a move on before she gets snatched up and you end up alone forever_

Beca stares at the messages. She rereads them over and over again until they all start to blur together. Of course Stacie doesn’t know. No one knows. They’d never really told anyone, have they?

“Hey, Em?”

“Hm?” She looks up from her textbook, her reading glasses crooked on her nose and a blot of ink somehow stained on the tip of her nose. Beca smirks and straightens the glasses so they rest properly on Emily’s face.

“How long do you think it’ll take the Bellas to figure out we’re married?” she asks, wiping at the ink blot on Emily’s scrunched-up nose. “Stacie just asked when we’re gonna start dating.”

Emily gives her a puzzled look. “Didn’t we post a photo of our rings? And videos from our honeymoon? Wait, we’ve  _told_ them on the group chat…didn’t we?”

“I don’t know, did we?”

They search each other’s eyes for any sign of recognition.

“Oh, my fricken stars,” Emily whispers, disbelief written all over her face. “Did we really not tell them we’re married?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Am I mixing everything up from the time we were fake engaged?”

“I think I did too.”

For a long minute, they simply stare at each other, unable to comprehend that they had actually forgotten to let the Bellas in on the fact that they got friggen  _hitched_.

“D-do you think they’ll believe us this time? You know, if we posted our rings and honeymoon photos and whatnot?” Emily asks tentatively.

“Right after Stacie sent those messages? Probably not.”

“Holy crap.”

“But hey. You’ve always wanted to bet on something, right?” Beca says, wiggling her eyebrows. “Let’s bet on how long it takes the Bellas to find out we’re married.”

“What? That’s not much of a bet,” Emily dismisses, “they’ll definitely find out within a month.”

“Oh, really? Because I say they’ll take another  _three_ months before they pick up on it.”

“You really give them no credit, do you?” Emily chuckles. “Okay, fine. It’s a bet.” 

“Hell yeah.”

They shake on it before Emily frowns. “Wait… what are we even betting? Money? A dinner? A drink?”

“How about,” Beca says, leaning in and slowly taking Emily’s glasses off. “The winner gets to decide?” She presses a soft kiss on the corner of Emily’s mouth, which curls upwards into a smirk.

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to take my time on this but it's Sunday night and work is probably going to kick my ass this week so I rushed to get it over with and now it's a hot mess and everyone seems incredibly ooc so enjoy
> 
> title song: Marry Me - Train
> 
> kick my ass at http://moxiemorton.tumblr.com/


End file.
